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Michael Wilde


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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

Was it not Crouch's money that kept us going when were in admin?

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

 

He put his hand in his pocket to help save the club, so that days like today could happen.

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

I thought the reason most fans lap him up is the fact that when the chips were really down he put his hand in his pocket to pay wages of ordinary staff. Yes he was in with Wilde, yes he made shares shortfall up to oust Lowe in the Wilde takeover, but when Wilde stepped away From what I remember Crouch got a grip of the bull****. The bloke had money, is a Saints fan, I don't think even he really wanted to be where he ended up.

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

 

Not true. The club was run by the execs and crouch, Corbett etc didn't have their way. Later in when crouch had control, he made some good decisions, like Pearson as manager. Crouch was a good guy, Wilde wasn't.

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Not true. The club was run by the execs and crouch, Corbett etc didn't have their way. Later in when crouch had control, he made some good decisions, like Pearson as manager. Crouch was a good guy, Wilde wasn't.

 

agreed Leon is a true saints fan, thick or thin, never saw the club as a money making machine like rupert and wilde

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The only good guy to come out of the whole shambles and whose part in the club shouldn't be underestimated. Paid the wages for a while and also made a huge loss on his shares to get Lowe out. I'm also pretty sure he was one of the ones who refused to let SISU take us over when Jim hone and the others wanted them in.

Edited by Turkish
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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

 

you make it sound like they went to Lowe begging him to come back and rescue the mess which is nowhere near the truth.

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

Makes you wander where this crap comes from...

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  • 2 months later...

The problem was that Crouch and Wilde maxed out the overdraft in an attempt to get back to the Prem in the second season in the Championship. Lowe had rolled the overdraft into the mortgage on SMS so there was scope to do this. When we lost in the play off semi, the writing was on the wall. Rank bad financial management in paying over the odds for players at the end of their careers and gambling with the club. Lowe came back and could not quite keep Barclays at bay. Which led to the current regime.

 

But this is all history, and has been done to death. Much more interested in what is going in right now, with a chairman who seems to know what he is doing.

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I wasn't keen on how he did some things but he put his hand n his pocket and lost a shed load. There were many Saints fans who had a lot of money but didn't put any in. So I will always respect the man.

Too many were happy to take the perks but hid away when they were really needed

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

 

Wow, what an absolutely moronic post. Like others said Crouch was the only one to pump money out of his own pocket into to keeping the club afloat in the months prior to the Liebherr takeover when other fans with the cash just sat back and watched.

 

Of course lets not forget he paid for the replacement Ted Bates statue out of his own pocket too. If I bumped into him on match day I'd have no qualms in shaking his hand and thanking him for keeping the club limping along in 2009, without his cash we might not have lasted till ML and NC come along.

 

His leaving statement from 2007: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/1564979.0/

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I think most would agree that this doesn't need raking over again, but some of the posters on here have a bizarre grasp of history.

 

The irony (For me) is three fold.

 

1) Crouch would have never let the club go into administration - As demonstrated by his hand out when he was already gone

2) In my opinion Barclays would never have pulled the plug, had Crouch not been ousted

3) Lowes aggressive EGM threats that got him back him, ultimately killed him and led us to the Marcus

 

The fall from grace was painful (At times soul destroying), but the climb back has been fantastic, possibly the best four years of being a Saints fan in my lifetime and the club is in the best ever shape in every department I have ever known.

 

We slate the skates for saying they wouldn't change a single thing about their downfall because they won the cup, but I don't think I would for Saints (Of course there are differences - not least we paid our creditors) but all in all, the journey has been such a laugh and the brilliant thing is, we aren't at the end.

 

So for an old fart like me, I thank all those that played their part (The good and bad) and just enjoy the football and where we are today.

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Maybe not but it does make him a good bloke.

 

There is also a quote that a fool and his money are soon parted whether this applies to Mr Crouch I do not know.

 

But for the inept way he managed the club leading it into administration has been fantastic for the club as Alpine has said from time to time

 

 

Now all we need is a good transfer policy as some of the acquistions have been puzzling ie getting Ramierz when a GK and CB were required at the start of last season

 

Although we have done really well overall lately our little slump maybe because we have not got adequate cover in the areas I mention

 

Key to success is having a water tight defence which we proved during the first part of the season so lets hope these two positions are addressed during the forthcoming window

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Very true. However, I think I'd rather have a good chairman like NC than a good bloke.

 

 

Perhaps but the comparison isn't possible anyway. Wilde did what he could with the personal funds available to him, NC has far more money available and it doesn't come out of his own pocket. Now if Wilde had had the wherewithal to completely take over the club and not have to be content with a 25% share or whatever it was things might have been different, or not.. who knows.

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Wow ... Just wow. What a scathing attack from our resident wordsmith. Your linguistic dexterity cuts right to my very core. I'm surprised you didn't charge me £35 for that dose of genius.

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I'm really quite amazed. A post from sotonjoe that actually makes sense gramatically and uses some quite big words of more than one syllable. It almost leads me to believe that there are two persons using his account name and that this is the other one.

 

Regarding the post that FF replied to, I don't see much support from others for sotonjoe's OP

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I think most would agree that this doesn't need raking over again, but some of the posters on here have a bizarre grasp of history.

 

The irony (For me) is three fold.

 

1) Crouch would have never let the club go into administration - As demonstrated by his hand out when he was already gone

2) In my opinion Barclays would never have pulled the plug, had Crouch not been ousted

3) Lowes aggressive EGM threats that got him back him, ultimately killed him and led us to the Marcus

 

The fall from grace was painful (At times soul destroying), but the climb back has been fantastic, possibly the best four years of being a Saints fan in my lifetime and the club is in the best ever shape in every department I have ever known.

 

We slate the skates for saying they wouldn't change a single thing about their downfall because they won the cup, but I don't think I would for Saints (Of course there are differences - not least we paid our creditors) but all in all, the journey has been such a laugh and the brilliant thing is, we aren't at the end.

 

So for an old fart like me, I thank all those that played their part (The good and bad) and just enjoy the football and where we are today.

 

Spot on.

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The problem was that Crouch and Wilde maxed out the overdraft in an attempt to get back to the Prem in the second season in the Championship. Lowe had rolled the overdraft into the mortgage on SMS so there was scope to do this. When we lost in the play off semi, the writing was on the wall. Rank bad financial management in paying over the odds for players at the end of their careers and gambling with the club. Lowe came back and could not quite keep Barclays at bay. Which led to the current regime.

 

But this is all history, and has been done to death. Much more interested in what is going in right now, with a chairman who seems to know what he is doing.

 

Wrong, crouch didn't have any control first time round but then when he was in charge was guiding us on right direction, Wilde was just an idiot.

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Wrong, crouch didn't have any control first time round but then when he was in charge was guiding us on right direction, Wilde was just an idiot.

 

I have no idea whether wilde was an idiot but the fans wanted him instead of Lowe however it was Crouch who was Chairman when our decline went into freefall and the shareholders wanted him replaced.

 

But thanks to his mis management we are in the position we are today

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I have no idea whether wilde was an idiot but the fans wanted him instead of Lowe however it was Crouch who was Chairman when our decline went into freefall and the shareholders wanted him replaced.

 

But thanks to his mis management we are in the position we are today

 

That's simply not true. Wilde was the Chairman and spent the family silver, sanctioned by the board, on Wildes promise of external investment...... Which, when it didn't materialize, Wilde was forced to step down and Crouch replaced him to clean up the mess. We as fans didn't realise quite how big that mess was at that point.

 

But don't let a lie get in the way of a good story.

Edited by Gemmel
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I have no idea whether wilde was an idiot but the fans wanted him instead of Lowe however it was Crouch who was Chairman when our decline went into freefall and the shareholders wanted him replaced.

 

But thanks to his mis management we are in the position we are today

 

I always thought the problem was Wilde promised new investment and failed to deliver. Leaving Saints in a pretty sh!tty position. Crouch appointed Pearson and kept us up when he was chairman. He has to take some of the blame for the Wilde era but Lowe was destroying the club anyway and carried on where he left off after Crouch had gone.

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Leon Crouch is a cult hero. Such an underrated figure in our history. He pumped hundreds of thousands of his own money into the club, just to keep it going for a bit longer, knowing he'd get none of it back.

 

This guy is never given the recognition he deserves IMO.

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Leon Crouch is a cult hero. Such an underrated figure in our history. He pumped hundreds of thousands of his own money into the club, just to keep it going for a bit longer, knowing he'd get none of it back.

 

This guy is never given the recognition he deserves IMO.

Couldn't agree more. Spot on.

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Leon Crouch is a cult hero. Such an underrated figure in our history. He pumped hundreds of thousands of his own money into the club, just to keep it going for a bit longer, knowing he'd get none of it back.

 

This guy is never given the recognition he deserves IMO.

 

Quite right. The one man who really and truly made sacrifices to help us survive. He should be given far more recognition.

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Leon Crouch is a cult hero. Such an underrated figure in our history. He pumped hundreds of thousands of his own money into the club, just to keep it going for a bit longer, knowing he'd get none of it back.

 

This guy is never given the recognition he deserves IMO.

 

Agree totally, he put his hand in his own pocket to ensure there was something to buy - and he did it because he was a fan.

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Wilde and Crouch were like Bill and Ben for this club. A great example of why simpleton fans

Should keep well away from running football clubs. Thanks to the pair of them, we gambled £8m on a proton push which failed and had to ask Lowe to try and recover the sinking ship afterwards. Just because Crouch talks like a yokel the fans lap him up.

Your not Rupert Lowe by any chance? I think if you had attended some of the shareholder meetings you wouldn't have posted such a simpleton post!!

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Wow ... Just wow. What a scathing attack from our resident wordsmith. Your linguistic dexterity cuts right to my very core. I'm surprised you didn't charge me £35 for that dose of genius.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

If you were a Japanese soldier during WW2 you would be one of those found hidden in the jungle some 30 years later still not accepting the war was over while wearing a Rupert Lowe deerstalker hat and a pair of Andrew Cowan underpants. I stand by my earlier remark - you are a sad person, someone who attacks under the cover of anonymity. I would respect your views if you tell me who you are - Duncan@duncanholley.co.uk

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Leon Crouch is a cult hero. Such an underrated figure in our history. He pumped hundreds of thousands of his own money into the club, just to keep it going for a bit longer, knowing he'd get none of it back.

 

This guy is never given the recognition he deserves IMO.

 

I think on here people have always had time for him. No doubt that putting his own money in to keep the club going makes him a top bloke. I just question how good a chairman he was.

 

The fact there are still arguments suggests for some people it is cut and dry exactly what happened. Personally, as time goes on my brain makes things less and less clear. i would like nothing better than for someone to point me to a well researched, accurate account of what happened in the years leading up admin. I doubt it is possible though and that reason I suspect you will always get wildely (excuse the pun) different interpretations.

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Reading this thread takes me back a few years:

 

Where is the investment coming from?

Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:13 am

A couple days ago, I spent £3 downloading the latest accounts on Merlion plc., Wilde's source of income and wealth. I am not completely sure if it his sole source of wealth to be used in his investment in Southampton Leisure plc, but I am pretty confident it is. I was hesitant to post my opinion on the strength of the finances he is relying on, because of the abuse the Mods allow me to get, but I'm going to anyway.

Everything in it the accounts confirms what I have guessed about the guy. Lowe has picked up on the financial position as well and that is why his main question was, where will the investment in Saints come from? Unless Wilde has had a lottery win he's not telling us about, the balance sheet of the company he owns will definitely not be the source of the investment. He (I assume as he is the sole shareholder) has been bleeding the company of the majority of it's profits in 2003 and 2004 in the form of dividends so that, as Lowe has noticed, it has got only about £980,000 in net assets at the date of the last return (31st December, 2004). Merlion had total assets of approx. £10.7M against which they owe about £9.7M

So, we have a guy with an appetite for borrowing, gearing a company to the hilt and bleeding it's profits in the form of dividends for the shareholders. He has taken significant dividends out, presumably to avoid taking a UK salary, avoiding National Insurance deductions and availing himself of the more favourable tax structure in Jersey. He is in too deep to make peace with Lowe, because, in my opinion, if he does and calls off the EGM, he will have to pay his advisors himself, rather than getting the Southampton Leisure plc to pay his costs, when he takes control.

Now, I could be wrong about his personal financial position, but I am suspicious. I don't think he will put significant money into Saints, because he doesn't have significant funds available. The question could be easily answered as I am sure he could post a response on this board. My problem is, I don't have access to more recent data (31st December, 2004) to accurately assess his companies' financial health (sound familiar?)

If his total wealth is largely based on the balance sheet I have seen, there is only one word I can use for anyone that supports him at the EGM.

Suckers.........

I have received the following from Mike Wilde in regard to your points:

Merlion Group’s turnover rose to approx STG 20m in 2005 and is expected (on current projections) to achieve in excess of STG 30m in 2006. This dramatic growth is due to the establishment of our speculative housing arm Infinity Homes Ltd. In respect of dividends there is a firm dividend policy in place at moment that prevents extraction of any more than 50% of taxable profit. I can also confirm that Merlion Group is certainly not my only source of income. I have substantial financial interests in a number of overseas countries as well as other companies and I have an established Family Trust which looks after family matters. I am not prepared to give information regarding my net worth as I am sure everyone can understand that it is not their business!!

Thank Mike for the information and I am glad to hear that the plc you control as (I am guessing) a minority shareholder, is growing from strength to strength. A couple points of clarification, if possible, as I am sure you want to get away from the computer to enjoy the sun in Jersey.

1. Do you intend to run Southampton Leisure plc with similar borrowing and thus interest coverage as you do Merlion plc and also a similar dividend policy?

2. £1,008,378 in dividends was taken out of Merlion plc in the financial year ending December 31st, 2003. Taxable profits before taxation were £569,069. Did you get the 50% round the wrong way that year?

Unless Wilde has had a lottery win he's not telling us about, the balance sheet of the company he owns will definitely not be the source of the investment. He (I assume as he is the sole shareholder) has been bleeding the company of the majority of it's profits in 2003 and 2004 in the form of dividends so that, as Lowe has noticed, it has got only about £980,000 in net assets at the date of the last return (31st December, 2004).

 

Infinity Homes Limited went into administration in 2008 followed in April, 2009, by Southampton FC.

 

I kept a copy of the thread and there are some gems from posters still on here. Suckers...

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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006

Are you Italian GM?

You have changed sides more times than Teddy Sherringham over the last few days. You couldn't support Lowe any more after the PR Office Stunt.. Then continued to, 3 days later... 2 days ago the Gavyn Davis support was the clincher for you, then less than 24 hrs later, you are back on here rubbishing Wilde again...

Shame you didn't put yourself forward for the meeting with Lee Hoos. He would have answered every single one of your questions face to face. In fact he was hoping you would attend...

 

Saintlee, Lee Hoos, Keith......:lol:

 

Like I said, suckers...

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Wow ... Just wow. What a scathing attack from our resident wordsmith. Your linguistic dexterity cuts right to my very core. I'm surprised you didn't charge me £35 for that dose of genius.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

 

You remind me soooo much of my old mate jonah.......:p

 

 

Ruperts mate and the man who tried to bull****e everyone:rolleyes:

 

You even tried to steal my crayons......you naughty financial whizkidz......or was that supposed to be Rupert:p

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A final PM exchange with Keith:

From: Keith

To: Guided Missile

Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:23 pm

I think your posts about Wilde's personal finances could be construed as possibly libellous. He has given you a response and won't talk further on the subject. I think you've tried to made a point and like many of yours, they are based on half arsed information and your own agenda.

From: Guided Missile

To: Keith

Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 4:28 pm

Subject: Re: I think

So Mike Wilde has threatened to sue me and you for libel, has he Keith? Listen, you well know my post was pure conjecture regarding his personal finances. With regard to Merlion plc, my information was based on the returns he files with Companies' House, so that post was hardly libellous.

By the way, I have no agenda but finding out as much as I can about someone who is about to control the football club I support. I expect the same transparency from Rupert Lowe. Look in the mirror and ask yourself what your agenda is.

By the way, if Mr Wilde is threatening to sue me for libel, my lawyers details are :

 

Contact:

*******

 

******* does all my corporate legal work and is a really nice guy.

PS I don't really want my tenner back, just this site's impartiality.

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Reading this thread takes me back a few years:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Infinity Homes Limited went into administration in 2008 followed in April, 2009, by Southampton FC.

 

I kept a copy of the thread and there are some gems from posters still on here. Suckers...

heh well done for spotting the signs at the time.

 

it shows how badly lowe and co. had mismanaged their position that a complete chancer could worm his way in and accelerate the PLC's demise. it did turn out to be a rather effective, if overly risky, way of dispossessing them of their shares though.

 

Leon, the only man of substance in the whole affair was apparently taken in as well.

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heh well done for spotting the signs at the time.

 

it shows how badly lowe and co. had mismanaged their position that a complete chancer could worm his way in and accelerate the PLC's demise. it did turn out to be a rather effective, if overly risky, way of dispossessing them of their shares though.

 

Leon, the only man of substance in the whole affair was apparently taken in as well.

at this moment in time I would like to thank all the cast of the time. If they had not done what they did we would not have the. Liebherrs and NC. At times it was like having McInnnes as our chairman, looking for the next photo opportunity or article in the Mail
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